1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to wireless mobile telecommunication networks and, more specifically, to enabling subscribers to generate and distribute multimedia broadcasts to others.
2. Description of the Related Art
Some wireless mobile telecommunication network service providers offer their subscribers or users a multimedia content delivery service that the users can set up and customize using a Web-based user interface. For example, the MEDIANET service offered by Cingular Wireless allows users to access a Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) portal from their cellular telephones or other mobile wireless devices. Using a wireless device, the user can check e-mail accounts and obtain news, traffic and weather reports, sports scores, stock prices, flight times, movie listings, and other information, as well as download ringtones, games and graphics. A user can also access his or her MEDIANET account from a personal computer via the Internet to set up preferences regarding the type of content the user would like delivered to the wireless device and perform other operations.
Mobile wireless devices can include not only Web browsers that enable them to access services such as MEDIANET but also media players, such as the Microsoft WINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER, which enable them to download and play streaming audio and video content. Cingular Wireless offers its subscribers who have appropriate wireless devices a service known as CINGULAR VIDEO that, through an application program on the wireless device, enables the user to enter the address at which a media file is located and download and play the file. CINGULAR VIDEO also includes a feature that displays a notification when new or updated content is available.
Traditionally, news organizations, media outlets, and content aggregators (e.g., Web portals) have been the major sources of audio and video broadcast content accessible to users of portable electronic playback devices. More recently, using readily available software applications, individuals have been creating their own broadcast content and making the content available to interested persons. Such broadcast content is sometimes referred to as a “podcast,” a term originally coined in reference to Apple Computer's IPOD personal digital media player but which is commonly used to refer generally to any digital audio or video recording that is made available on the Internet for downloading to a personal digital media player. Podcasting is an automatic mechanism whereby a podcaster posts content (i.e., podcasts) in the form of media files on a server computer, along with a feed file indicating the Internet address at which the media files can be accessed. The podcaster publishes the Internet address of the feed file so that interested persons can set up a content aggregator, such as that available through Apple Computer's ITUNES service, to monitor it. The content aggregator program allows a user to find and subscribe to feeds relating to content of interest to the user. For example, ITUNES allows a user to browse through content categories in which the user is interested, such as news, politics, comedy, etc., and select the feeds to which the user would like to subscribe. Under control of the content aggregator, the client computer automatically periodically downloads the feed files of the various podcasters to which the user subscribed. The feed files contain the Internet addresses of the podcasts (i.e., media files). As a podcaster creates and posts new podcasts, the podcaster updates the feed file to list the Internet addresses of the newly available podcasts. When the content aggregator detects changes in a feed file, it automatically downloads the most recently added media files. The user can then download the media files to an IPOD or other personal digital media player.
It would be desirable to provide a versatile method and system for distributing content to mobile wireless devices. It is to such a method and system that the present invention is primarily directed.